Ch-ch-ch-changes

Well, we finally saw the personnel allotments for next year. I am still employed full-time, but my parapro has been cut to 3 days per week and the technology teacher (who worked with me closely on a number of things) got put on the “reassignment list” because her position has been cut for next year. We are returning to one K-5 school, but we still don’t know who’s on the administrative team.

I think parents are going to be in for a huge shock when they realize how large class sizes are going to be next year. Max class size is 32 for 4th & 5th grades. County requested a waiver to put up to 37 students per 4th & 5th grade classroom. Has anyone from the district office or school board visited one of my 4th and 5th grade classrooms? They have a hard enough time fitting 28 kids in there now. Where are 9 additional bodies going to go? On the floor? In the hallway?

At these levels, teaching is going to become nothing more than glorified babysitting. I had a lovely group of 3rd graders this morning for a skills lesson. And the group from hell this afternoon. I finally took the half of the class that wanted to learn aside and continued with the lesson while leaving the other half in their small groups exploring the resource we were studying.

All I am going to say is there’s a huge difference in students who come from families that value education and those that don’t.